If you’re finding that your mouth is full of sores from dentures, it can be hard to get them to heal. Typically, most mouth sores should heal in a week or two, but if your denture sores aren’t healing, there may be something wrong.
Causes of Denture Sores
There are many potential causes of denture sores. These include:
- Poor fitting dentures
- Excessive biting force
- Jaw clenching due to stress
- Infections
- Oral Cancer
Many of these can be related to your dentures. If your dentures are causing the sores, they can slow healing or prevent it altogether.
How Dentures Cause Sores
The fit of your dentures is one of the most common causes of denture sores. If your dentures don’t fit properly, it can cause pressure spots that lead to sore spots on your gums. Dentures can also cause sores if they slide around in your mouth. Not only does this cause the dentures to repeatedly strike certain places in the mouth, but the sliding motion can abrade your gums, causing sores.
Your dentures can also cause excessive force if they’re not fitted to your bite. Dentures that aren’t fitted to your mouth can lead to irregular or excessive force that leads to sore gums. Of course, to some extent, any amount of biting force on your dentures is excessive. Our gums are soft tissues–they aren’t supposed to support the force of biting and chewing. The force is supposed to be directed to the bones.
Jaw clenching with dentures may be related to emotional and life stress, but it may be related to the fit of dentures. If your dentures don’t fit together in a comfortable way, your jaw muscles are going to try to find a comfortable spot — which causes them to clench together. you might also spend a lot of time trying to get your dentures to seat properly every time before you talk or eat.
Oral infections are common and can be facilitated by your dentures. The most common oral infections related to dentures are gum disease and Candida infections (thrush).
Preventing and Treating Denture Sores
The most important step to preventing denture sores is making sure that your dentures fit properly. Properly fitting dentures balance forces in your mouth better and eliminate places where the dentures cause excessive pressure.
Neuromuscular dentures are fitted not just to your gums but to your jaw muscles, making them more comfortable and reducing or eliminating TMJ-related jaw clenching. Implant dentures also help by putting more of the pressure on the implants rather than your gums. Some implant dentures can even be designed to direct all the force of biting and chewing onto your bones. This doesn’t just reduce sores on your gums, it can improve your bite force so you can eat more different foods. Fully supported implant dentures can eliminate the palate in upper dentures, which will restore your sense of taste and make food more enjoyable again, too.
Next, make sure you are properly maintaining your dentures. Clean them properly and keep them out at night to give your sores time to recover.
Talk to your dentist about sores related to dentures. There are many potential treatments that can improve your sores. This will also give your dentist the opportunity to evaluate whether the sores are cancerous.
If you are tired of denture sores related to poorly fitting dentures, please call (803) 781-9090 for an appointment with a Columbia, SC denture dentist at Smile Columbia Dentistry today.
